


A Ghost Story

by Ellieheim



Category: Hellboy (Comics), Hellboy - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, cavendish - Freeform, ghosting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28896297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellieheim/pseuds/Ellieheim
Summary: Edith's point of view. Her pain, her waiting, her ghost.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	A Ghost Story

**Author's Note:**

> My original language is Spanish, if there are mistakes forgive me.

1

It was windy, but she didn't feel cold. She was on the rocks looking at the sea, she looked up and looked at the peak. What was up there? All this time looking at the horizon had been enough but now she wanted to know what was up there. She had a spark in her head, something that made her doubt, a little memory. She was no longer satisfied with knowing that she existed, she wanted to know more, she wanted to know what she was doing there. She climbed the cliff to the top where she stood still, frozen. Did she feel cold? Wow, she had forgotten that feeling. She had forgotten that... House. Because what was in front of her was a house, _ her house _ whispered a voice inside her head. Although that was impossible, she told herself. She had always lived in the sea. Her clothes were soaked and her hair smelled of the sea. She didn't live in that house, that was ridiculous.

But she took a step toward residence anyway. Then another, and another. Until approaching the door. It was a big house, her husband had built it a little before their wedding. _Husband? What husband?_ She did not have a husband, much less the mansion was newly built. It was a house in ruins, rotting away, falling apart. She swallowed hard, feeling an ache in her chest. _Why does it hurt so much?_ She wondered to herself. _What did I forget?_

She entered the house. Everything was dark, the house smelled of mold. The library had rotten books. The sofa was dirty, broken, and mice had burrowed in it. The only painting left was dusty. On one wall was a full-length mirror. She saw her reflection and didn't recognize herself. Langdon had always told her that ghosts didn't exist and even if they did, the house was too new to house them. He was wrong. There she was looking at one, in the mirror. But who was Langdon? And wasn't that ghosts were white? That skeletal face, that mass of tangled and rotten hair dripping salt water, a skeleton dressed in strips of dirty and rotten clothing couldn’t be a ghost. She turned away from the mirror, turning her back on the apparition and decided to explore the rest of the house. She walked down the hallways until she reached the main room. But the bedroom was not like the rest of the house, not like the living room she had just passed. It was illuminated with a golden light, the sheets pulled back as if Langdon had gone to get a cup of coffee that she was trying so hard to get him to stop drinking. She moved closer to the bed, sitting up, and brought her face to the pillow. Smell of him, of her husband. She stopped and looked at the black and white photographs. The photos of her. She looked at them for a long time until she almost cried. Those photos, that house...  _ My dresses _ she thought suddenly, and she went to the closet, where she opened it and ran her hands through her clothes, which she had loved to wear so much. She put on a blue dress, which had been one of her favorites. She looked back at the bed drawn back. Where was Langdon? His Langdon? Again he had stayed awake reading a strange book, or perhaps he had stayed at her desk with a stranger talking about topics that she did not understand. In those moments she always felt distant from her husband, she felt that he was in another world, where she could not enter and that made her very sad. He was all she had, the only kind thing that the world had given him. She didn't want to lose him. But no, better not to think negatively. Maybe he was just smoking outside, looking at the ocean, or concentrating on writing a letter to her good friend Cavendish. But something in her chest still hurt, and she didn't understand what it was. Was it because of Langdon? Was it for her? What was it that hurt so much?

She went back to the living room. Down the hall she felt someone following her, but when she turned from her there was no one. The house was empty.

-Langdon?

She asked, no one answered.

-My love?

Silence.

Her heart felt small, it hurt.

She returned to the living room, to the moldy books and the destroyed walls. When she approached the desk she found the box with the initials L.E.C empty and remembered everything. Her heart broke. No. Not like that. That was a nightmare, it was the world that always tried to harm her. She knew that the world always found a way to hurt her. She went to the mirror and covered it with a blanket. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, the living room was as she remembered it. Bright, beautiful, the library full of books, her husband's desk with its many strange travel artifacts, the sofa like new, the fireplace with fire. That living room where she had danced so many times with Langdon, that table where they had dined with Elihu and Lydia Cavendish for Christmas. She knew that the ghost in the mirror was her, she knew it deep inside her heart, but it was better not to think about it. She was Edith Caul, that was her house, and her husband was probably looking at the sea in the yard. She didn't want to look in the mirror, she didn't want to see the house again in that rotten state. If that was reality or a fantasy, she didn't care, she only cared that it didn't hurt, even if it was a lie. Because it had already hurt too much...  _ I hope that, for just once in my life, the world is kinder than harsh. Hopefully this is reality and what I saw a few moments ago just a nightmare. with hope so, although I don't mind living in a lie to be happy, it would be so nice if reality is finally kinder than illusion and not the other way around. _ She thought. Like when she met Langdon, when they fell in love, when they got married and when they lived together. _ Illusion was always better than reality until I met Caul. _ She reasoned.  _ He saved me _ . And so it was. Langdon had brought happiness back to her life, had made the sea go quiet. She loved him so much… 

But where was he?

Edith looked around, searching for him. Where was her husband? Without him, illusion or reality couldn’t be happy. The house, her favorite dress didn't matter, without him...

_ What does that sound like? _ She turned, to look at the windows. She covered her ears sobbing. The noise from outside, the noise from the outside world, the noise from the sea. The sea. The sea called her.  _ No, no, Langdon, please help me. _ But the sea was not silent.  _ Edith, Edith, Edith…  _ No, no, no.  _ Jump, jump, jump. _ NO!

The sea was calling her again, she was hearing it again as loudly as before. Langdon wasn't there to shut him up. She collapsed on the ground and cried. Because she was alone. Because at last she remembered who she was, whose house was. And Langdon wasn't there to greet her. Edith thought she would find him there, waiting for her. That he would forgive her for doing what she had done, and because she had forgotten. But that would not happen, because he was the first to leave and never return. Langdon had gone on a trip, though she begged him not to, and he never returned. And the sea began to scream her name as he had never done before, and after a month... She jumped. She sank. She drowned. Her tears salted her with the salty sea that her husband loved so much, even more than her, because he had not returned. 

But no. Edith stopped crying and looked at the windows. She would not listen to the sea. Langdon where she wanted him to be, alive, dead, would return. he would remember and go home, like her. And she would be there to greet him. To wait for him, to forgive him for leaving her, and everything would be as perfect as before. She just had to wait. It would happen, because it had happened to her. Edith was back, Langdon would do the same. she put all her hope on it.

She wiped the tears from her face and sat up to cover the windows. She would not let the sea beat her again, she would be strong. She had to resist, for Langdon. She didn't know much about the world, but once Elihu told her that everything transforms, it doesn't disappear. Her husband always said that Cavendish, no matter how dear a friend of the family that he was, when he had a drink he spoke pure nonsense, but it was the only thing that Edith had left. And she wouldn't let go.

Because, even if it had been years, Langdon was somewhere, looking ghostly like her, or alive like before, he could even be very different, it didn't matter. He would return and Edith would recognize him.

With the mirror and the windows covered, she sat on the sofa to wait.

And she waited for a long time.


End file.
